This is the address given by the Mayor to the Cape Town Press Club on his first 100 days in office.
Members of the Cape Town Press Club, colleagues, friends.
Why 100 days?
There is no constitutional significance to the first 100 days of an elected official’s time in office. It is an arbitrary and artificial milestone. So, why are we here?
The tradition of marking 100 days originated in the Presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt. When he was inaugurated in March 1934, the United States had just been through four years of extreme hardship brought on by economic depression.
On taking office, FDR summoned Congress into a special 100-day-long legislative session, during which he presented and managed to pass 15 major bills designed to counter the effects of the Great Depression.
Roosevelt passed 76 pieces of minor legislation that signalled his intention to get America back on its feet through the revival of its economy, including taking the country off the gold standard, initiating massive public works programmes, offering assistance to farmers and the unemployed, and finally ending prohibition.
FDR’s first 100 days in office were such a feat of political ingenuity that it is now held up as a standard against which the performance of all other US presidents are measured.
Despite this foreign genesis, I think the 100 day concept is relevant to us here because it gives the public a chance to hold us publicly and immediately accountable on the things we said we’d do just a few months ago in the election. I welcome that accountability now.
Our first 100 days
In our own — much more modest — way, we have used the past 100 days in office, our first 100 days, to get Cape Town back on track, onto a new path of prosperity and success.
We have done so guided by a spirit of caring for our fellow residents, caring about their dignity, and caring about the opportunities they have to lead happier, safer and more prosperous lives.
We have also shown that we want Cape Town to take its rightful place among the truly great cities of the world.
We unashamedly want to do big, brave and excellent things here, because South Africa desperately needs an example of how we can still move forward towards the society described in our Constitution.
The pervasive sense of decline and cynicism felt by so many across the country can slowly be turned into optimism for the future again. We never ever want South Africa to become used to failure. Instead, we should aim higher, be more ambitious, and set the bar for success.
And, in so doing, all that we do is with the intention of helping to grow the economy meaningfully faster here so that we can lift more people out of poverty over time.
We call this our sense of clear higher purpose, and it is what motivates everything we have done and will do for the next five years.
At the outset, I must report to you: I am loving this job! Every minute of it. I feel deeply privileged to hold this office — without doubt one of the best jobs in South African politics, and frankly, one of the coolest jobs in world politics.
The problems are profoundly difficult and intellectually stimulating. Every single decision matters in the real world, and each small step in the right direction gives one a profound sense of personal meaning and purpose.
The people are fantastic – both our Team Cape Town colleagues and the residents, even when they’re grumpy (they usually have some good reason to be).
And I’m enjoying very much working with Premier Alan Winde and the Western Cape team, who share our absolute commitment to getting the economy growing faster as the primary means of rolling back poverty.
I can confidently say that there is a renewed sense of urgency and optimism in the City of Cape Town. We are on track, and there is forward momentum.
Those who knew me in a slightly different life will know that I am a finance man. I have often said, if you want to know what a government really cares about, look at their budget. So let’s start there.
Throughout December and January, the City’s treasury team and I collectively spent hundreds of hours ensuring our adjustment budget reflected our promise to make Cape Town a more caring city that invests in the infrastructure needed to improve basic service delivery.
I have made my expectations clear: we will spend significantly more on capital investment in the coming five years, particularly on sewer, water, public transport and electricity infrastructure.
From the outset, our budget has signalled that we are — and will be — a caring government, which prioritises the dignity of all of our residents, including the least well off. We are committed to improving Capetonians’ quality of life, even as the city’s population grows at a rate far exceeding the national average. I’ll say more on this later.
In these early days, we have also had our fair share of crises to deal with, starting with a 27-hour power outage for hundreds of thousands of people when a fire in a cable tunnel blew an Eskom ultra-high voltage line.
This was somewhat of a baptism of fire, but offered a helpful lesson.
Our residents want to be kept informed, and be able to interact with the City on the basis of openness and honesty. They want to see us at work, and be able to trust that we see them and care.
I’ve instituted an approach to communications that keeps residents updated on issues that affect them. We respond to residents’ queries and concerns on social media. We give them insight into the day-to-day functioning of the Mayor’s office and the city at large.
The skill and dedication of our electricity engineers and their teams, who worked through the night with no rest, underscored to me how blessed Cape Town is with truly talented and committed officials – to whom I now refer to as Team Cape Town.
Besides the cable fire, we had the parliament fire and hosted an historic State of the Nation Address at our magnificent fully-renovated and painstakingly restored City Hall.
We dealt with red-listing in December, on the cusp of our busiest tourist season in three years and had to pivot almost overnight to a domestic tourism campaign and other fresh ideas – like open streets dining – to help get businesses through.
And of course, we bade a moving Cape Town farewell to our beloved Arch, Desmond Tutu.
These unexpected events have only buttressed and supported our efforts to position Cape Town as the exemplar of the best of what we South Africans can do. And, although they have been stressful and even tragic, these events have given me insight ¬— early on — into the significance of the role into which I have been elected.
Every day, I feel like I am doing something significant, driven by a higher purpose. I love it. But what does this mean, practically?
Energy
When I spoke here previously, I said that it was unacceptable that load-shedding has become so normal in South Africa. All that we hear about economic growth, poverty and unemployment, is all frankly lip service, if we do not have power to power our economy.
I have said that we simply cannot continue to wait for an increasingly disintegrating national state to sort this out. Our lack of energy security is an economic emergency.
Last week, we announced the opening of our first round of procurement of power from independent power producers. The City will be considering proposals from IPPs for projects that will allow us to access an affordable and reliable electricity supply, especially those that are able to help us reduce our reliance on Eskom during peak times of use.
We will consider proposals from a range of projects, including generation-only projects, generation-plus-storage projects, and storage-only projects. We have taken bold steps towards energy security in Cape Town that will over time protect residents from the failure of Eskom, and provide the biggest possible boost to our economy.
Sewage and pollution
Our most serious infrastructure and service delivery issue is the city’s sewer network, particularly in the most densely populated parts of the city, which is why I visited Khayelitsha to talk about this on my first day in office.
We have managed the crisis in the short term through significant spending on jet-vac trucks in the adjustment budget. But frequent sewer blockages and leaks in the most dense parts of the city are long-term issues that seriously threaten the dignity of residents, and it is going to take a major infrastructure investment to sort it out.
In these first 100 days, we have put in place an ambitious, multi-faceted plan for dignified sanitation.
This plan is multi-faceted, including the existing multi-billion rand upgrades to wastewater treatment works, but also nearly quadrupling the kilometres of pipe replacement annually, more preventative jetting to clear sewers, more budget for critical sewer pump station upgrades and full replacements, and more vehicle and manpower to respond to sewer spills.
Our recently launched city-wide spring clean campaign has already seen communities from all over Cape Town come forward and start doing their own clean ups.
The idea behind this volunteering-focussed programme is simple. We can foster a spirit of community pride and mutual respect in Cape Town, and that starts with getting together to clean up our city home.
As part of this campaign, we’re offering rewards to residents who help us catch those who dump illegally in our parks and sewers. I’m not allowed to issue law enforcement instructions, but I’ve asked our officers to prioritise fining litterbugs and dumpers, and they’ve taken up the challenge with enthusiasm. I now get weekly stats on fines issued, and I’ve promised to take the officer who writes the most fines for littering to lunch!
Homelessness
Burgeoning homelessness in the city is a complex issue that involves intractable social problems like poverty, mental illness and addiction, family breakdown and domestic violence.
We have committed ourselves to addressing this in a caring and sustainable way, that affirms the dignity of our homeless residents and offers them assistance and opportunities to improve their stations in life.
I believe that no person should live on the streets. It is unsafe, unhealthy, and undignified for them, and unsafe and unhealthy for the communities around them.
As a first step to addressing this problem, we have added R10 million to our Care Programme in the January adjustment budget to help people off the streets sustainably, and expand the Safe Spaces that are already doing important dignity-affirming work.
Cape Town’s Streets and Public Places By-Law has also been amended to align with our country’s Constitution and Bill of Rights. This is in keeping with our commitment to building a more inclusive, more caring Cape Town.
The amended by-law requires that alternative accommodation be offered, and ensures that sleeping and camping overnight in public places is no longer classified as an automatic offence if no other choice is available to a person. The amendments effectively de-criminalise this conduct where no alternative is available, while still ensuring that every intervention of the City is oriented towards assisting people to move off the streets.
Land Release
One policy area I’ve spent much time on, because it is so important to what we’re trying to achieve in Cape Town, is land release for more affordable housing.
In the past month, we’ve gone back and forth on several iterations of a plan to increase the size of the land pipeline to be released for affordable housing along key transport routes and close to key economic nodes across our metro. This includes compressing the time of processes within our control, such as the zoning and approvals to pre-packaging land for release.
The outcome we want is clear: We must deliver our existing social housing projects in the earliest possible timeframes, including those in central Cape Town, and we must speed up the land release pipeline for more and bigger projects.
Transport
This weekend, we got the N2 MyCiti Express route running again. For three years, that route has not functioned. This key route for our City’s economy is now back in action, and our people will be getting to work safely and on time.
We are continuing to engage with National Government on the rail service as it is clear the current agencies have not been capable of running a safe, efficient and effective service. Many of Prasa’s lines and stations were vandalised to the point of disrepair during the many months of the national lockdown. This has seriously impacted Capetonians’ ability to get to work, especially those living on the Cape Flats.
We are busy with a feasibility study to determine whether there is scope for the City to take over the running of the rail service. Based on early indications, my feeling is that we absolutely can.
Safety
There is no trade-off between our values of caring and dignity, and our security. In fact, caring for our residents demands we have safer streets through investment in a better-equipped, better staffed, better trained, more professional and caring police force.
We have prioritised even more funding for safety and security in the adjustment budget, augmenting already-existing programmes to combat crime in Cape Town where SAPS has failed.
We have already seen the impact of these programmes in the crime statistics announced last week, which saw a significant decrease in the murder rate, and increased drug and gun crime detections, in many precincts where additional resources have been deployed.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I want to bring us back to the point of all of this.
South Africa needs a beacon of hope. South Africa needs to be able to look around and see that our nation has a city that is caring, committed, non-corrupt and morally courageous. Cape Town needs to be that city.
These first 100 days have put us firmly on that path.
We have made a good start. But it is just a start. All of the hard work lies ahead, as does the opportunity to do something really important for Cape Town, and for South Africa.
While I love this job and am deeply committed to this higher purpose, I want to ask you to hold me to account — to hold us to account. Help us ensure that the next 100 days, the next 1000 days are moving us towards the achievement of our profound moral goal.
I am confident that when we meet again to further reflect on how we are doing — when enough time has elapsed to see our policies and bold initial steps bear fruit — we will all agree that Cape Town is a more caring, more inclusive, more prosperous, more united, more respectful, safer, and freer place.
Source: City Of Cape Town